rtiiiSii-ir.tiJtattva 


miat  the  Rising  of  the 
Dead  Should  Mean 


i;iiliii 


bV4ZDO 

.K2qW55 


What  the  Rising  of  the 
Dead  Should  Mean 


JOHN  KELMAN 
D.D. 


AUG    28  197t 

^LOGICAL  StV^ 


What  the  Rising  of  the  Dead 
Should  Mean 


V 

AUG    28  1979 


^I^l  .G'CAL  Sg^g^ 
A  SERMON 


Delivered  in  the 

Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church 

New  York  City 

Sunday,  March  27, 1921 


By  the  Pastor,  the 

REV.  JOHNKELMAN 

D.D. 


Printed  by  the  Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church 


What  the  Rising  of  the  Dead 
Should  Mean 


Mark  9:10 


AT  this  season  there  comes  to  all  that  won- 
derful experience  which  is  the  thrill  of 
^  spring.  We  are  glad,  but  we  know  not 
why.  There  is  an  irrational  exhilaration  in  the 
air  and  an  unaccountable  delight  in  things.  Hope 
and  joy  seem  to  spring  up  from  nowhere,  and  when 
we  ask  ourselves  the  reason  we  cannot  find  it.  Only 
we  know  that  the  winter  of  our  discontent  is  over 
and  we  rejoice  in  the  returning  light.  Wide  across 
the  fields  of  the  w^orld  the  spring  gladness  is 
celebrated  by  lavish  decoration.  Beauty  is  every- 
where. Nansen  tells  us  how  he  found  on  the  north 
coast  of  Siberia  that  "no  sooner  was  the  snow  gone 
than  hosts  of  tiny  flowers  sprang  up — saxifrages, 
pale  yellow  mountain  poppies,  forget-me-nots, 
and  cloud-berry  flow^ers  and  bluebells,  not  more 
than  two  inches  high."  There  is  about  everything 
a  sense  of  cleansing,  of  refreshment,  and  new 
beginnings.  The  saddest  heart  feels  that  all  is  not 
lost  yet,  and  even  the  worst  and  most  sinful  catches 
sight  of  some  possible  improvement. 

It  is  this  that  makes  even  to  the  worldling  the 
Church's  Easter  gift  and  message  to  the  world  so 
appropriate  and  conspicuous.  In  religion  the 
winter  sadness  is  sore  upon  us  all.  It  is  not  the 
winter  of  our  discontent  alone,  but  for  many  it  is 
the  winter  of  their  failure,  hopelessness,   and  sin 


that  has  tended  ever  toward  Calvary  through 
darker  and  darker  days.  Suddenly  the  sun  of 
Easter  Day  leaps  into  the  sky  and  all  the  world 
feels  and  glories  in  the  splendor  of  it.  This  is  the 
oldest  and  greatest  of  the  Church's  festivals.  In 
the  fourth  century  we  read  that  all  Christians 
and  even  many  pagans  poured  into  the  church 
with  lights  to  watch  there  for  the  morning  of  the 
resurrection.  On  this  night  the  cities  were  splen- 
didly illuminated  and  transfigured  into  a  sea  of 
fire.  Let  us  go  back  to-day  to  the  history  of  the 
beginnings  of  things. 

First,  we  are  faced  by  the  fact  of  the  resurrec- 
tion itself.  No  fact  is  more  sharply  historic  than 
that  of  the  sudden  appearance  of  the  Christian 
Church.  It  was  unlike  anything  which  existed 
then  or  had  ever  existed  in  the  world  before.  It 
was  in  its  way  more  original  than  even  the  Christian 
message.  At  the  time  of  its  rise  the  whole  of  the 
little  new  and  unorganized  Christian  world  was 
sunk  in  hopeless  depression.  In  the  great  trial  of 
strength  between  it  and  the  ruling  powers  of  the 
day  it  had  been  beaten  as  thoroughly  as  anybody 
had  ever  been  in  the  history  of  the  world.  It 
could  hardly  be  called  a  revolutionary  body,  for 
there  was  no  formulation  of  a  program,  nor  even 
any  clear  understanding  of  aims.  It  was  simply  a 
little  group  of  men  and  women  stunned  by  defeat 
and  sunk  in  sorrow.  Suddenly,  without  the  slight- 
est warning,  it  sprang  into  the  most  vital  center  of 
propaganda,  with  powers  of  adjustment  and  organ- 
ization, that  then  existed  in  the  whole  world. 
Instead  of  sorrow  its  message  was  full  of  the  most 
exuberant  gladness.    The  joy  of  it  seemed  to  infect 

4 


humanity,  and  everywhere,  far  and  near  across  the 
lands,  the  Church  set  the  world  wild  with  joy. 

There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  cause  of 
this  was  a  well -authenticated  belief  in  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  Christ.  This  was  the  Church's 
own  view,  and  it  was  the  reason  which  she  gave  for 
her  power  on  the  earth.  It  is  very  striking  to 
notice  how  this  entered  into  the  first  preaching  of 
Christianity.  Every  doctrine  has  its  supreme 
hour.  The  note  of  modern  preaching  is  the 
Fatherhood  and  Kingdom  of  God.  The  note  of  the 
Reformation  doctrine  was  that  of  justification  by 
faith.  But  these  early  days  were  distinctively  the 
hour  of  the  resurrection.  In  all  the  preaching  of 
the  apostles  there  is  the  sound  of  triumph.  They 
never  represented  Christ  as  merely  escaping  from 
the  prison-house  of  death,  but  spoke  of  His  victory 
over  death  as  the  thing  which  has  changed  the 
world.  When  His  death  had  been  ascertained  a 
deep  sigh  of  relief  had  risen  from  the  anxious  hearts 
of  His  enemies.  They  little  knew  that  He  had 
died  deliberately,  knowing  that  in  dying  He  was 
conquering  death. 

This  preaching  of  the  resurrection  is  manifest 
throughout  the  whole  story  of  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles.  Peter  preached  it  at  Jerusalem,  and 
Paul  preached  it  at  Athens,  and  everywhere  else. 
Paul's  own  conversion  was  caused,  according  to  his 
own  account,  by  the  assurance  that  Jesus  Who  had 
died  was  still  alive  and  had  spoken  to  him.  Through- 
out the  whole  of  these  narratives  we  hear  of  men 
witnessing  and  preaching  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
Christ.  That  was  their  gospel,  that  their  living 
faith.     The  world  of  their  time  had  been  absorbed 


in  the  thought  of  death.  A  strong  tension  and 
strain  were  on  it.  It  has  been  called  a  sustained 
cry  as  of  hungry  souls  crying  out  for  immor- 
tality. In  the  centuries  immediately  following,  the 
same  thing  is  felt,  in  the  record  we  have  of  the 
Greek  oracles  and  the  questions  men  and  women 
asked  of  them.  These  people  lived  intensely  and 
loved  their  life.  Their  labor  meant  much  to  them, 
and  their  sensitive  spirits  responded  to  beauty  and 
joy  and  love  with  a  great  and  constant  delight. 
These  things  were  to  them  more  convincing  than 
death.  They  believed  in  them  with  a  different 
kind  of  belief  from  their  belief  in  death.  They 
were  the  very  reality,  the  innermost  truth  of  things. 
Yet  death  came  in  among  all  those  fair  and  charm- 
ing convictions,  and  brutality  clubbed  them  down. 
There  was  something  not  only  tragic  but  unreason- 
able in  this,  and  in  a  way  incredible.  It  is  this 
tension,  and  this  attitude  to  the  thought  of  con- 
tinued life  beyond  the  grave,  which  explains  the 
great  shout  that  arose  from  the  conviction  that  none 
of  those  fair  things  had  perished,  but  that  all 
survive  for  them  that  believe.  The  resurrection  of 
Jesus  was  much  more  than  an  event.  It  was  an 
event  which  changed  the  whole  aspect  of  life  for 
all  believers.  The  spectacle  of  the  early  Christian 
Church,  even  in  the  sad  and  trying  days  of  their 
worship  in  the  Catacombs,  has  been  well  described 
as  that  of  a  company  to  whom  some  authentic 
message  had  come  from  across  the  flaming  rampart 
of  the  world. 

Oh,  my  brothers,  we  believe  it  still.  Sad  and 
solemn  spirits  believe  it,  and  in  their  own  serious 
way  rejoice  in  it.     "After  the  fever  of  life,  after 


weariness,  and  sicknesses,  fightings  and  despondings, 
languor  and  fretfulness,  struggling  and  succeeding; 
after  all  the  changes  and  chances  of  this  troubled 
unhealthy  state— at  length  comes  death,  at  length 
the  great  white  throne,  at  length  the  beatific 
vision."  So  Newman  wrote,  but  his  faith  was  not 
one  whit  more  impressive  than  that  of  thousands  of 
gladder  spirits  who  have  managed  to  preserve 
permanently  their  faith  in  life,  who  through  all  that 
tends  to  make  men  morbid  have  remained  healthy, 
as  they  face  to-day  and  look  forward  to  to-morrow. 
These  undefeated  believers  draw  from  that  resur- 
rection constant  supplies  of  peace  and  joy  and  love 
in  these  latter  times.  Yes,  to-day  after  centuries 
we  believe  it  still. 

Besides  the  mere  fact  of  the  resurrection  there 
is  the  spiritual  interpretation  of  it.  What  does 
this  fact  stand  for  in  our  lives  and  in  the  lives 
of  all  Christians?  "Christ  being  raised  from  the 
dead  dieth  no  more."  What  does  this  mean  for 
the  Church  and  for  us  in  each  succeeding  genera- 
tion? The  answers  to  these  questions  will  give  us 
the  permanent  gifts  of  Eastertide. 

First,  it  has  revealed  the  method  of  God  in 
history.  The  ways  of  Providence  are  proverbially 
perplexing,  and  the  old  problems  which  troubled 
Job  and  the  patriarchs  repeat  themselves  still. 
Among  these  difficulties  not  the  least  is  this,  that 
we  expect  a  smooth  course  of  progress  in  history, 
and  regard  that  as  the  natural  way  in  which  God 
fulfils  His  purposes.  When  the  smoothness  of  the 
development  of  events  is  broken,  and  the  stream  of 
life  becomes  turbulent,  we  are  apt  to  feel  that  this 
is  not  what  we  would  have  expected  of  the  God  in 


whom  we  have  believed.  The  Resurrection  of 
Jesus  Christ  proclaims  that  God's  method  in  history 
and  providence  is  very  far  indeed  from  being  a 
smooth  and  unbroken  progress.  He  works  by 
con^antly  repeated  successions  of  deaths  and 
resurrections  which  may  be  expected  continually, 
both  in  history  and  in  the  lives  of  individuals. 
Here,  in  the  supreme  revelation  of  His  nature,  He 
has,  as  it  were,  set  the  type  after  which  in  His  own 
inscrutable  wisdom  He  has  chosen  to  operate  all 
along  the  line.  If  we  can  take  to  ourselves  in  an 
intelligent  way  this  fact  that  death  and  resurrection 
is  the  method  of  God,  it  will  be  of  immense  use  to  us. 
It  will  end  our  amazement  and  silence  our  futile 
rebellions.  It  will  give  us  faith  to  watch  calmly 
the  broken  and  often  disappointing  course  of  his- 
tory, and  it  will  give  us  faith  also  to  endure  pa- 
tiently the  experience  of  life.  In  both  fields  we 
shall  expect,  and  most  assuredly  we  shall  find,  that 
it  is  through  loss  that  gain  must  come,  and  life 
through  death. 

Second,  in  His  resurrection  Jesus  takes  us  up 
into  His  own  experience  and  shares  it  with  us. 
St.  Paul  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  speaks  of 
our  being  made  conformable  unto  His  death  that 
we  may  attain  unto  the  resurrection  of  the  dead. 
There  may  be  some  who  feel  this  particular  Easter 
morning  that  Christ  is  risen  in  vain  for  them.  It  is 
not  enough  for  them  that  He  has  risen.  They 
also  must  rise  from  some  death  that  has  overtaken 
them,  silencing  and  darkening  their  spirits.  But 
this  is  precisely  what  Jesus  desires  to  do  for  them. 
He  appeals  to  every  one  of  us  this  morning,  calling 
us  to  come  unto  Him,  that  He  may  take  us  up  into 

8 


His  whole  life  and  put  a  new  and  higher  meaning 
upon  every  incident  of  ours.  By  faith  we  are  to  be 
united  with  the  crucified,  or,  to  quote  again  the 
words  of  St.  Paul,  "crucified  with  Christ,"  in  the 
death  He  died  to  sin.  Then  we  are  called  to  rise 
with  Him  unto  that  greater  and  brighter  life  in 
which  men  seek  the  things  that  are  above.  We  are 
called  to  rise  out  of  small  things  into  great,  out  of 
poor  and  selfish  interests  into  a  large  and  generous 
life,  out  of  all  our  sorrows  into  a  joy  that  He  is 
able  and  willing  to  send  us,  out  of  all  despair  into 
a  living  hope. 

Come,  my  brother,  my  sister,  it  is  you  that  all 
this  means.  Let  me  break  for  you  this  box  of 
ointment  of  spikenard,  very  precious,  that  you 
may  have  this  sweetness  for  yourself.  How  much 
there  is  that  is  dead  in  all  of  us,  and  that  has  waited 
for  long  and  in  vain  for  a  resurrection.  Here  is 
Christ,  calling  you  to-day  to  that  very  hope.  Awake, 
thou  that  sleepest,  and  arise  from  the  dead,  and 
Christ  shall  give  thee  light.  All  your  purest  hopes, 
all  your  finest  dreams  of  beauty,  all  the  promise 
of  love,  all  the  strength  and  poise  of  confirmed 
and  constant  character,  these  are  your  heritage 
in  the  risen  Christ.  A  modern  mystic  has  said, 
"Assimilate  the  resurrection  of  Christ  and  your 
eye  is  on  the  far-off  of  things :  you  are  disimprisoned : 
the  walls  of  sense  are  broken  down.  The  distant 
landscapes  freshen  with  their  suggestions."  It  is 
so  indeed.  The  resurrection  view  of  life  is  thus 
large  and  spacious,  and  the  prison-house  of  thoughts 
that  can  never  be  beyond  oneself  is  broken  down. 
Another  great  writer  says,  "This  is  the  full  Chris- 
tian faith.     When  I  declare  my  belief  that  on  the 


third  day  Jesus  rose,  I  am  really  yielding  to  argu- 
ment. When  I  am  crucified  with  Christ,  buried 
with  Christ,  and  rise  to  newness  of  life  in  Christ, 
I  am  believing  after  the  very  sense  of  Jesus." 

Third,  the  promise  and  certainty  of  personal 
immortality.  This  has  always  been  closely  con- 
nected with  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus,  but  it  has  not  always  been  perceived  how 
intimate  and  inseparable  the  relation  between  them 
is.  The  only  effective  faith  in  immortality  comes 
from  a  sense  of  the  love  of  God,  and  may  be  ex- 
pressed in  the  simple  formula  that  if  the  love  of 
God  experienced  on  earth  be  real,  then  we  must 
trust  that  love  not  to  let  us  go  in  death.  But  the 
point  at  which  the  love  of  God  becomes  plain  to  us 
is  in  our  union  with  Jesus  Christ.  That  union  is 
real  and  we  cannot  but  believe  it  to  be  eternal. 
"Once  in  Him  in  Him  forever."  Either  this  whole 
matter  of  Christian  experience  is  a  dream  and  an 
illusion,  or  else  it  is  so  real  that  it  can  never  end. 
The  astonishing  fact  is  not  that  Christ's  love  to  us 
should  be  eternal,  but  that  He  should  ever  love  us 
at  all.  If  we  have  reason  to  believe  that  He  has 
actually  loved  us,  then  we  cannot  possibly  doubt 
that  His  love  will  last.  If  we  commit  ourselves 
to  Christ  and  He  receives  us  into  His  keeping  we 
may  surely  trust  Him  not  to  leave  us  behind.  Now 
is  Christ  risen  from  the  dead,  the  first  fruits  of 
them  that  slept.  If  we  believe  that  Jesus  rose  from 
the  dead  even  so  them  that  sleep  in  Jesus  will 
God  bring  with  Him.  For  so  also  this  corruptible 
shall  put  on  incorruption  and  this  mortal  shall 
put  on  immortality.  Ah,  the  Lover  of  our  souls 
did  much  for  us  when  He  rose  from  the  dead. 

10 


He  took  the  sting  from  death  and  the  victory  from 
the  grave.  Henceforth,  for  all  that  know  His 
mighty  love  and  power  "death  is  but  a  seeming  and 
splendors  lie  behind  it." 

My  brother,  my  friend,  one  last  word.  This 
means  you.  It  is  for  you  if  you  will  have  it. 
What  is  to  be  your  Easter  portion  this  year?  Is 
it  to  be  but  a  few  gleams  of  enjoyable  brightness 
or  the  sentimental  play  of  some  bright  and  glad 
feelings  of  the  springtime?  Why  should  you  take 
so  poor  a  gift  from  Him  Who  offers  you  every- 
thing? Eastertide  may  be  for  you  a  bond  and 
covenant  with  the  Lord  of  eternal  life.  All  these 
forces  with  which  we  have  been  dealing  to-day  are 
actual,  powerful  facts  and  eternal  promises.  If  you 
want  it  you  may  have  it  so.  The  risen  Christ 
will  appear  to  you,  if  you  will,  in  all  this  glory  of 
vast  promise  for  now  and  forever. 

There  is  but  one  condition,  and  it  is  the  same 
as  it  was  of  old.  Who  were  those  to  whom  He 
showed  Himself  when  He  had  risen  from  the  dead? 
They  were  not  the  great  ones  of  the  land,  not  its 
wise  searchers  or  its  proud  guardians  of  the  truth 
men  held.  They  were  just  a  few  men  and  women 
whose  only  qualification  for  seeing  Him  was  that 
they  loved  Him.  They  had  not  been  worthy  of 
His  love,  but  they  loved  Him  still,  and  they 
frankly  desired  His  love  as  the  greatest  thing  in 
life.  That  is  always  and  will  always  be  the  truth. 
"Jesus  Christ  as  He  rose  at  Easter  should  be 
visible,  but  only  to  the  eye  of  love,  only  to  the  eye 
which  life  fills  with  tears  and  heaven  with  light." 


II 


DATE  DUE 

mTPm 

1 

CAVLOKO 

PniNTCOINU   S  A 

mmmm 


BV4253  .K29W55 

What  the  rising  of  the  dead  should  mean 

Princeton  Theological  Semmary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00052  6345 


